White chocolate chilli brownies

We should cocoa just celebrated it's first year and there was a fantastic virtual party to celebrate - do check it out if you want to indulge in all sorts of chocolatey goodness! To kick-start the new year, the challenge for this month is chilli! I've made chocolate and chilli cupcakes previously with mixed response - I think it was not to everyone's taste so I was quite nervous about this month's challenge. As mentioned before, I've just changed jobs (yes started already in lovely new job) and I made this together with a giant red velvet cupcake for my last day.
I got this recipe from BBC food and I have to say I was honestly surprised at how well it turned out. I was really worried that nobody would like it or that it would taste horrible. In fact I actually cut a small piece to try before bringing it to work! I had to stop myself from eating more as it was really, really good :)
This is one of the best things about these challenges - discovering new recipes or techniques and/or trying something new or different. I don't generally like white chocolate but I'm ok with chillies. However the combination was fantastic. It was really light and delicious and you could really taste the chilli but it wasn't overpowering. I could honestly have eaten the whole tray myself. Someone told me it was the best thing I've baked so far!
If you are skeptical (like I was) honestly, give this a go and I promise you won't regret it.

 I found an orange chilli instead of a red one but figured that it wouldn't make much of a difference 

 I chopped the chilli quite finely (probably more than required) as I was worried it would be too spicy 

 cooking the chillies with sugar and water 

 adding to the brownie mix - I love the colours 

 fresh from the oven 

 dust with icing sugar 

 delicious!

Recipe from BBC food (from Saturday Kitchen)

200g butter

300g white chocolate, chopped

3 medium eggs

150g caster sugar

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

200g plain flour

pinch of salt

icing sugar for serving

For the chillies

1 large fresh red chilli, de-seeded

1 large fresh green chilli, de-seeded

100g caster sugar

150ml water

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Lightly butter a 20cm x 30cm straight sided baking tin and line with greaseproof paper. 
• Finely slice the chillies on the diagonal. 
• Combine the sugar, water and chillies and bring to the boil, stirring.  Simmer for 5 minutes. 
• In a heatproof bowl set over a pot of barely simmering water, melt the butter and 150g of white chocolate, whisking well until smooth.
• Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly. 
• In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla together until pale.
• Beat in the melted white chocolate mixture. 
• Fold in the sifted flour and salt, then the remaining chopped white chocolate (150g). 
• Drain the chillies and add most of them to the batter. 
• Pour into the baking pan, strew the remaining chillies on top and bake for 25 minutes or until the top is firm and lightly golden. 
• Remove and cool in the pan.
• Cut into small or large squares, dust with icing sugar and serve. 

Giant Red Velvet Cupcake

Today was my last day at my current job (sob sob).  It's really sad to be leaving as I've had such a fantastic year.  The team have been absolutely brilliant and I've learnt so much from everyone. Don't worry, no long blubbery oscar worthy speech but cake and goodies :)

So I had to finish with a 'bang' well a cake of course and what better than a giant red velvet cupcake! I seem to make them for leaving do's and birthdays (giant chocolate caramel cupcake, giant strawberries and cream cupcake, giant chocolate cupcake) but you have to agree that they do have a certain 'wow' factor.
I've used my standard red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting recipe from the hummingbird bakery.
I also made my entry for this month's we should cocoa challenge which was a surprise hit. It disappeared even quicker than the cake!! Check back later to find out what I made.
It has been a busy baking week for me as it was my last week at work so I thought I'd push the boat out and managed to bake a total of 12 items, some of which are repeat bakes. I will try to update my blog every day/alternate day this week to keep up.
On a final note, I got the loveliest leaving present - a V&A fine china 2 tier cake stand!!! I'm soooooooo excited and happy as I've always wanted one of these and now I have one!! Thank you everyone.

Root Beer Bundt Cake

Root beer is one of my favourite soft drinks. In fact, it's probably the only soft drink I like so when I saw this on cupcake crazy's blog, I immediately bookmarked it. It reminds me of my childhood as I used to drink root beer floats (which were probably bad for my health!).  I'm so glad I finally got round to making it. It really tastes of rootbeer with a lovely moist texture and it kept well for days afterwards. Did you know that root beer is made using the root of a sassafras plant?

113g butter

220g flour

2.5 cups root beer (I used A&W root beer)

125g cocoa powder

57g chocolate, chopped

225g caster sugar

100g dark brown sugar

1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon salt

3 eggs, beaten

280g icing sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• Preheat the oven to 160C. 
• Butter and flour a Bundt pan.
• Heat 2 cups of root beer, chocolate and butter in a large saucepan over medium heat until the butter is melted. 
• Add the caster sugar and brown sugar and whisk until dissolved.
• Remove from the heat and allow to cool. 
• Combine flour, baking powder, all spice powder and salt in a bowl. 
• Whisk the eggs into the root beer mixture.
• Gently fold in the dry ingredients.
• Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 1 hour. 
• Gently poke the cake all over with a skewer and pour 1/4 cup root beer over the cake.
• Leave to cool in the pan for 20 minutes and then invert the cake and allow to cool completely. 
• To make the glaze: 
• Whisk remaining 1/4 cup root beer with a pinch of salt, icing sugar and vanilla extract in a bowl until smooth. 
• Drizzle over the cake when cooled. 

Flourless Almond Cake with raspberries

I was talking to a colleague recently and found out she is intolerant of flour. That explains why she politely declines all my baked goods. So I decided to make a flourless cake so she could join in the indulgence! I've made a few flourless cakes previously, usually of the chocolate variety and decided to do something a little different this time. This is a really simple recipe with fantastic results. Its the first recipe I'm trying from a book I bought a while back called Home Bake by Eric Lanlard. He has a cafe-patisserie, Cake Boy in London which another colleague has told me about but I've never had a chance to try it. Has anyone been?
The book is full of lovely pictures, great recipes and tips and I'll definitely be baking from here again. I made some madeleines following the success of this recipe but that's for another day :)
I decided to jazz up this simple cake with some raspberries and homemade raspberry sauce. The verdict - everyone really enjoyed it especially the intended recipient. I've made another one tonight as the first one disappeared so quickly, not everyone had a chance to try it!

100g unsalted butter, melted
200g golden caster sugar
4 large eggs
200g ground almonds
1 teaspoon almond essence

• Preheat the oven to 180C. 
• Grease and line a 20cm sponge tin.
• Using an electric mixer, beat the sugar and eggs together at medium-high speed until they double in volume. 
• Whisk in the melted butter and then the ground almonds and almond essence. 
• Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake for 30-45 minutes until the top of the cake is golden brown and the cake is shrinking away from the side of the tin.
• Allow to stand for 10 minutes before turning out on to a wire rack to cool completely. 
• I served mine with fresh raspberries on top and a homemade raspberry sauce (blitz 150g raspberries with a few drops of lemon juice (to taste) and a few teaspoons of icing sugar (to taste) )

Best ever brownies

I am always on the quest for the perfect brownies and when I saw these on one of my favourite websites BBC Good Food, I knew I had to try it especially since they claim to be best-ever brownies! Verdict : ALMOST! It was moist and gooey with a crisp top, exactly how I like my brownies! It's definitely a choc-a-holics dream as it has milk, dark and white chocolate and cocoa powder. My favourite/best ever brownie is still the triple chocolate brownie from Sainsbury's but this one is most definitely in the top 5. What's your favourite brownie recipe?

 melt chocolate and butter 

whisk the eggs and sugar until its thick and creamy like this. 

 fresh from the oven 

 delicious!

Recipe from BBC Good Food 

185g unsalted butter

185g best dark chocolate

85g plain flour

40g cocoa powder

50g white chocolate

50g milk chocolate

3 large eggs

275g golden caster sugar

1. Cut the butter into smallish cubes and tip into a medium bowl. Break the dark chocolate into small pieces and drop into the bowl. Fill a small saucepan about a quarter full with hot water, then sit the bowl on top so it rests on the rim of the pan, not touching the water. Put over a low heat until the butter and chocolate have melted, stirring occasionally to mix them. Now remove the bowl from the pan. Alternatively, cover the bowl loosely with cling film and put in the microwave for 2 minutes on High. Leave the melted mixture to cool to room temperature.
2. While you wait for the chocolate to cool, position a shelf in the middle of your oven and turn the oven on to fan 160C/conventional180C/gas 4 (most ovens take 10-15 minutes to heat up). Using a shallow 20cm square tin, cut out a square of non-stick baking parchment to line the base. Now tip the flour and cocoa powder into a sieve held over a medium bowl, and tap and shake the sieve so they run through together and you get rid of any lumps.
3. With a large sharp knife, chop the white and milk chocolate into chunks on a board. The slabs of chocolate will be quite hard, so the safest way to do this is to hold the knife over the chocolate and press the tip down on the board, then bring the rest of the blade down across the chocolate. Keep on doing this, moving the knife across the chocolate to chop it into pieces, then turn the board round 90 degrees and again work across the chocolate so you end up with rough squares.
4. Break the eggs into a large bowl and tip in the sugar. With an electric mixer on maximum speed, whisk the eggs and sugar until they look thick and creamy, like a milk shake. This can take 3-8 minutes, depending on how powerful your mixer is, so don't lose heart. You'll know it's ready when the mixture becomes really pale and about double its original volume. Another check is to turn off the mixer, lift out the beaters and wiggle them from side to side. If the mixture that runs off the beaters leaves a trail on the surface of the mixture in the bowl for a second or two, you're there.
5. Pour the cooled chocolate mixture over the eggy mousse, then gently fold together with a rubber spatula. Plunge the spatula in at one side, take it underneath and bring it up the opposite side and in again at the middle. Continue going under and over in a figure of eight, moving the bowl round after each folding so you can get at it from all sides, until the two mixtures are one and the colour is a mottled dark brown. The idea is to marry them without knocking out the air, so be as gentle and slow as you like - you don't want to undo all the work you did in step 4.
6. Hold the sieve over the bowl of eggy chocolate mixture and resift the cocoa and flour mixture, shaking the sieve from side to side, to cover the top evenly. Gently fold in this powder using the same figure of eight action as before. The mixture will look dry and dusty at first, and a bit unpromising, but if you keep going very gently and patiently, it will end up looking gungy and fudgy. Stop just before you feel you should, as you don't want to overdo this mixing. Finally, stir in the white and milk chocolate chunks until they're dotted throughout. Now your mixing is done and the oven can take over.
7. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, scraping every bit out of the bowl with the spatula. Gently ease the mixture into the corners of the tin and paddle the spatula from side to side across the top to level it. Put in the oven and set your timer for 25 minutes. When the buzzer goes, open the oven, pull the shelf out a bit and gently shake the tin. If the brownie wobbles in the middle, it's not quite done, so slide it back in and bake for another 5 minutes until the top has a shiny, papery crust and the sides are just beginning to come away from the tin. Take out of the oven.
8. Leave the whole thing in the tin until completely cold, then, if you're using the brownie tin, lift up the protruding rim slightly and slide the uncut brownie out on its base. If you're using a normal tin, lift out the brownie with the foil. Cut into quarters, then cut each quarter into four squares and finally into triangles. These brownies are so addictive you'll want to make a second batch before the first is finished, but if you want to make some to hide away for a special occasion, it's useful to know that they'll keep in an airtight container for a good two weeks and in the freezer for up to a month.

Giant Chocolate Cupcake

I am back from my travels and am really pleased that I’ve managed to get this in for this month’s We Should Cocoa challenge. I was really excited when I first saw the challenge as I love birthdays and I love chocolate so I definitely didn’t want to miss out! It was also my birthday recently but as I was away, I haven’t had a chance to make a cake so this is a birthday cake for myself and for WSC. As the theme is chocolate, I’ve made a giant chocolate cupcake, filled with Spanish chocolate filling and topped with my favourite chocolate buttercream icing. I added some stars on top – why not? And some M&Ms as you just can’t have enough chocolate! This is definitely a choc-a-holics cake and it disappeared really quickly at work.

 making the batter 

 Spanish chocolate that I used for the filling

 fill chocolate cupcake with more chocolate

 add even more chocolate - my piping skills are a little rusty! 

 some stars for celebration

 and just a few M&Ms to finish the look! 

Recipe for chocolate cupcake and chocolate buttercream icing and be found here

Syrup Crunch Cookies

I saw these on one of my favourite blogs, the caked crusader and knew I had to make it and to make it soon. It contains most of my favourite ingredients and the perfect opportunity presented itself when we had a celebratory breakfast for a colleague who was getting married. I thought the cornflakes and oats would make it very 'breakfast-ty'! It's really more-rish and I had quite a few as they came out of the oven! Someone commented that it tastes like it should be part of 1 of your 5 a day but clearly it's not! I'm definitely making these again and again.
I'm off on a short summer break but will be back with more baking goodness soon :) 

250g unsalted butter
200g condensed milk
175g golden syruo
175g cornflakes
175g porridge oats
250g plain flour
100g custard powder
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

• Preheat the oven to 180˚C


• Line 2 large baking sheets with baking paper.


• Place the butter, condensed milk and golden syrup in a large saucepan and heat gently.


• Stir occasionally until the ingredients have melted and evenly combined; they should be runny.


• In a separate bowl crush the cornflakes by hand – you don’t want them crumbed, just broken up a bit.


• Stir in the oats, flour, custard powder and bicarbonate of soda.


• Stir the dry ingredients into the wet mix in the saucepan.


• Scoop heaped tablespoons onto the baking sheets, leaving a gap around the biscuits for expansion while baking. 


• Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden.


• Leave to cool, on their baking sheets, on a wire rack. They will be soft on leaving the oven but will firm up as they cool.